The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, applying First Circuit law, has now held that a breach of contract claim involving an agreement not to engage in reverse engineering is not preempted by the Copyright Act and that the district court properly dropped the copyright damages as duplicative of the contract damages. The Federal Circuit also reversed a jury verdict of patent infringement, stating that in suit and, as properly construed, no reasonable jury could have found infringement of the patent claims. Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, Inc., No. 01-11082002 U.S. App. LEXIS 17184, at (Fed. Cir. Aug. 20, 2002).
The technology involved in Bowers’ patent is a template to improve computer aided design (CAD) software. The developers of Geodraft software, which utilizes Bowers’ template, obtained a registered copyright covering their software and licensed it to Bowers. Bowers sold a software product using a shrink-wrap license that prohibited reverse engineering. The ensuing
